OCR Text |
Show Vlll, Center at all. This book is not a biography of John Muir. Although I hope it has a firm foundation in biographical fact, I never meant to retell the life. Instead I chose to occupy myself with what I call Muir's spiritual journey. I was interested in his thinking while in the mountains, and his struggle to articulate his views to people who were not in the mountains. I wanted to know what kinds of philosophical questions he asked, and what kinds of answers he received while he wandered in the Sierra. I wanted to investigate the conscious decisions he made and how he embodied them in his writing. I was particularly interested in Muir's ethics. What was a right relation between Man and Nature and how could that relationship be transacted? Why, for instance, had he become an advocate of National Parks? I wanted to know what his life meant, but I found that to be an impossible, if not arrogant question. So I began to ask what his books meant about his life, or mine. Just as Muir felt no desire to separate himself from the mountains he loved, or treat them as objects, so I have felt that way for many years now. Further, I knew that when I began to question Muir's decisions, I was also exploring my own thoughts about the mountains, and about Parks. I do not wish to deny a simple fact. This book about Muir is also a book about my own thinking. Well, not only my own thinking. I would like to believe that it reflects the thinking of a whole community of my generation. Muir always had a special place |